The Brothers Karamazov [NOOK Book]

Overview

Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880), is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature ...

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Overview

Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880), is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disastrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the author's most cherished causes and beliefs are presented with a note of irreverence, so that orthodoxy and radicalism, sanity and madness, love and hatred, right and wrong are no longer mutually exclusive. Rebecca West considered it 'the allegory for the world's maturity', but with children to the fore. This new translation does full justice to Dostoevsky's genius, particularly in the use of the spoken word, which ranges over every mode of human expression.

The story of the Karamazov brothers and their varying justifications, or lack thereof, for the world.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

“[Dostoevsky is] at once the most literary and compulsively readable of novelists we continue to regard as great . . . The Brothers Karamazov stands as the culmination of his art–his last, longest, richest, and most capacious book. [This] scrupulous rendition can only be welcomed. It returns us to a work we thought we knew, subtly altered and so made new again.” –Washington Post Book World

“A miracle . . . Every page of the new Karamazov is a permanent standard, and an inspiration.” –The Times (London)

“One finally gets the musical whole of Dostoevsky’s original.” –New York Times Book Review

“Absolutely faithful . . . Fulfills in remarkable measure most of the criteria for an ideal translation . . . The stylistic accuracy and versatility of registers used . . . bring out the richness and depth of the original in a way similar to a faithful and sensitive restoration of a painting.” –The Independent

“It may well be that Dostoevsky’s [world], with all its resourceful energies of life and language, is only now–and through the medium of [this] new translation–beginning to come home to the English-speaking reader.” –New York Review of Books

“Heartily recommended to any reader who wishes to come as close to Dostoevsky’s Russian as it is possible.” –Joseph Frank, Princeton University

With an Introduction by Malcolm V. Jones

From Barnes & Noble

This turbulent story centers on the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a corrupt, loutish landowner, and the aftermath for his sons: the passionate Dmitri, the coldly intellectual Ivan, the spiritual Alexey, and the bastard Smerdyakov.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881), one of nineteenth-century Russia’s greatest novelists, spent four years in a convict prison in Siberia, after which he was obliged to enlist in the army. In later years his penchant for gambling sent him deeply into debt. Most of his important works were written after 1864, including Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov, all available from Penguin Classics.

By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among us) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and which I shall speak of in its proper place. For the moment I will only say of this "landowner" (as we used to call him, though for all his life he hardly ever lived on his estate) that he was a strange type, yet one rather frequently met with, precisely the type of man who is not only worthless and depraved but muddleheaded as well—one of those muddleheaded people who still handle their own little business deals quite skillfully, if nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovich, for instance, started with next to nothing, he was a very small landowner, he ran around having dinner at other men's tables, he tried to foist himself off as a sponger, and yet at his death he was discovered to have as much as a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time he remained all his life one of the most muddleheaded madcaps in our district. Again I say it was not stupidity—most of these madcaps are rather clever and shrewd—but precisely muddleheadedness, even a special, national form of it.

He was married twice and had three sons—the eldest, Dmitri Fyodorovich, by his first wife, and the other two, Ivan and Alexei, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovich's first wife belonged to a rather wealthy aristocratic family, the Miusovs, also landowners in our district. Precisely how it happened that a girl with a dowry, a beautiful girl, too, and moreover one of those pert, intelligent girls not uncommon in this generation but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless "runt," as everyone used to call him, I cannot begin to explain. But then, I once knew a young lady still of the last "romantic" generation who, after several years of enigmatic love for a certain gentleman, whom, by the way, she could have married quite easily at any moment, ended up, after inventing all sorts of insurmountable obstacles, by throwing herself on a stormy night into a rather deep and swift river from a high bank somewhat resembling a cliff, and perished there decidedly by her own caprice, only because she wanted to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. Even then, if the cliff, chosen and cherished from long ago, had not been so picturesque, if it had been merely a flat, prosaic bank, the suicide might not have taken place at all. This is a true fact, and one can assume that in our Russian life of the past two or three generations there have been not a few similar facts. In the same way, the action of Adelaida Ivanovna Miusov was doubtless an echo of foreign influences, the chafings of a mind imprisoned. Perhaps she wanted to assert her feminine independence, to go against social conventions, against the despotism of her relatives and family, and her obliging imagination convinced her, if only briefly, that Fyodor Pavlovich, despite his dignity as a sponger, was still one of the boldest and most sarcastic spirits of that transitional epoch—transitional to everything better—whereas he was simply an evil buffoon and nothing more. The affair gained piquancy from elopement, which strongly appealed to Adelaida Ivanovna. As for Fyodor Pavlovich, his social position at the time made him quite ready for any such venture, for he passionately desired to set himself up by whatever means. To squeeze into a good family and get a dowry was tempting indeed. As for mutual love, it seems there never was any either on the bride's part or on his own, despite the beauty of Adelaida Ivanovna. This was, perhaps, the only case of its kind in Fyodor Pavlovich's life, for he was a great sensualist all his days, always ready to hang onto any skirt that merely beckoned to him. This one woman alone, sensually speaking, made no particular impression on him.

They had no sooner eloped than it became clear to Adelaida Ivanovna that she felt only contempt for her husband and nothing more. Thus the consequences of their marriage revealed themselves extraordinarily quickly. And though her family even accepted the situation fairly soon and allotted the runaway bride her dowry, the married couple began leading a very disorderly life, full of eternal scenes. It was said that in the circumstances the young wife showed far more dignity and high-mindedness than did Fyodor Pavlovich, who, as is now known, filched all her cash from her, as much as twenty-five thousand roubles, the moment she got it, so that from then on as far as she was concerned all those thousands positively vanished, as it were, into thin air. As for the little village and the rather fine town house that came with her dowry, for a long time he tried very hard to have them transferred to his name by means of some appropriate deed, and he would probably have succeeded, merely because of the contempt and loathing, so to speak, that his shameless extortions and entreaties aroused in his wife, merely because of her emotional exhaustion—anything to be rid of him. Fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna's family intervened and put a stop to his hogging. It is well known that there were frequent fights between husband and wife, but according to tradition it was not Fyodor Pavlovich who did the beating but Adelaida Ivanovna, a hot-tempered lady, bold, dark-skinned, impatient, and endowed with remarkable physical strength. Finally she fled the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovich with a destitute seminarian, leaving the three-year-old Mitya in his father's hands. Fyodor Pavlovich immediately set up a regular harem in his house and gave himself to the most unbridled drinking. In the intermissions, he drove over most of the province, tearfully complaining to all and sundry that Adelaida had abandoned him, going into details that any husband ought to have been too ashamed to reveal about his married life. The thing was that he seemed to enjoy and even feel flattered by playing the ludicrous role of the offended husband, embroidering on and embellishing the details of the offense. "One would think you had been promoted, Fyodor Pavlovich," the scoffers used to say, "you're so pleased despite all your woes!" Many even added that he was glad to brush up his old role of buffoon, and that, to make things funnier still, he pretended not to notice his ridiculous position. But who knows, perhaps he was simply naive. At last he managed to find the trail of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone to live with her seminarian and where she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into the most complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovich at once began bustling about, making ready to go to Petersburg. Why? He, of course, had no idea. True, he might even have gone; but having undertaken such a decision, he at once felt fully entitled to get up his courage for the journey by throwing himself into more boundless drinking. Just then his wife's family received news of her death in Petersburg. She died somehow suddenly, in some garret, of typhus according to one version, of starvation according to another. Fyodor Pavlovich was drunk when he learned of his wife's death, and the story goes that he ran down the street, lifting his hands to the sky and joyfully shouting: "Now lettest thou thy Servant depart in peace." Others say that he wept and sobbed like a little child, so much so that they say he was pitiful to see, however repulsive they found him. Both versions may very well be true—that is, that he rejoiced at his release and wept for her who released him, all at the same time. In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.

Chapter Two

Of course, one can imagine what sort of father and mentor such a man would be. As a father he did precisely what was expected of him; that is, he totally and utterly abandoned his child by Adelaida Ivanovna, not out of malice towards him and not from any wounded matrimonial feelings, but simply because he totally forgot about him. While he was pestering everyone with his tears and complaints, and turning his house into an iniquitous den, a faithful family servant, Grigory, took the three-year-old Mitya into his care, and if Grigory had not looked after him then, there would perhaps have been no one to change the child's shirt. Moreover, it so happened that the child's relatives on his mother's side also seemed to forget about him at first. His grandfather, that is, Mr. Miusov himself, the father of Adelaida Ivanovna, was no longer living. His widow, Mitya's grandmother, had moved to Moscow and was quite ill, and the sisters were all married, so that Mitya had to spend almost a whole year with the servant Grigory, living in the servants' cottage. But even if his papa had remembered him (indeed, he could not have been unaware of his existence), he would have sent him back to the cottage, for the child would have gotten in the way of his debaucheries. Just then, however, the late Adelaida Ivanovna's cousin, Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov, happened to return from Paris. Afterwards he lived abroad for many years, but at the time he was still a very young man, and, among the Miusovs, an unusual sort of man—enlightened, metropolitan, cosmopolitan, a lifelong European, and at the end of his life a liberal of the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had relations with many of the most liberal people of his epoch, both in Russia and abroad; he knew Proudhon and Bakunin personally; and he particularly liked to recall and describe—this was already near his journey's end—the three days of the February revolution in Paris in forty-eight, letting on that he himself had almost taken part in it on the barricades. This was one of the most delightful memories of his youth. He had independent property, valued according to the old system at about a thousand souls. His splendid estate lay just beyond our little town and bordered on the lands of our famous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovich, while still very young, having just come into his inheritance, at once began endless litigation over the rights to some kind of fishing in the river or wood-cutting in the forest—I am not sure which, but to start a lawsuit against the "clericals" was something he even considered his civic and enlightened duty. Hearing all about Adelaida Ivanovna, whom he of course remembered and had once even shown some interest in, and learning of Mitya's existence, he decided, despite his youthful indignation and his contempt for Fyodor Pavlovich, to step into the affair. It was then that he first made the acquaintance of Fyodor Pavlovich. He told him straight off that he wanted to take responsibility for the child's upbringing. Years later he used to recall, as typical of the man, that when he first began speaking about Mitya with Fyodor Pavlovich, the latter looked for a while as if he had no idea what child it was all about, and was even surprised, as it were, to learn that he had a little son somewhere in the house. Though Pyotr Alexandrovich may have exaggerated, still there must have been some semblance of truth in his story. But all his life, as a matter of fact, Fyodor Pavlovich was fond of play-acting, of suddenly taking up some unexpected role right in front of you, often when there was no need for it, and even to his own real disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case. This trait, however, is characteristic of a great many people, even rather intelligent ones, and not only of Fyodor Pavlovich. Pyotr Alexandrovich hotly pursued the business and even got himself appointed the child's guardian (jointly with Fyodor Pavlovich), since there was, after all, a small property, a house and estate, left by his mother. Mitya did, in fact, go to live with his mother's cousin, but the latter, having no family of his own, and being in a hurry to return to Paris for a long stay as soon as he had arranged and secured the income from his estates, entrusted the child to one of his mother's cousins, a Moscow lady. In the event, having settled himself in Paris, he, too, forgot about the child, especially after the outbreak of the abovementioned February revolution, which so struck his imagination that he was unable to forget it for the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died and Mitya was passed on to one of her married daughters. It seems he later changed homes a fourth time. I won't go into that now, particularly as I shall have much to say later on about this first-born son of Fyodor Pavlovich, and must confine myself here to the most essential facts, without which I could not even begin my novel.

First of all, this Dmitri Fyodorovich was the only one of Fyodor Pavlovich's three sons who grew up in the conviction that he, at any rate, had some property and would be independent when he came of age. He spent a disorderly adolescence and youth: he never finished high school; later he landed in some military school, then turned up in the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a duel, was broken to the ranks, promoted again, led a wild life, and spent, comparatively, a great deal of money. He received nothing from Fyodor Pavlovich before his coming of age, and until then ran into debt. He saw and got to know his father, Fyodor Pavlovich, for the first time only after his coming of age, when he arrived in our parts with the purpose of settling the question of his property with him. It seems that even then he did not like his parent; he stayed only a short time with him and left quickly, as soon as he had managed to obtain a certain sum from him and made a certain deal with him concerning future payments from the estate, without (a fact worth noting) being able to learn from his father either the value of the estate or its yearly income. Fyodor Pavlovich saw at once (and this must be remembered) that Mitya had a false and inflated idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovich was quite pleased with this, as it suited his own designs. He simply concluded that the young man was frivolous, wild, passionate, impatient, a wastrel who, if he could snatch a little something for a time, would immediately calm down, though of course not for long. And this Fyodor Pavlovich began to exploit; that is, he fobbed him off with small sums, with short-term handouts, until, after four years, Mitya, having run out of patience, came to our town a second time to finish his affairs with his parent, when it suddenly turned out, to his great amazement, that he already had precisely nothing, that it was impossible even to get an accounting, that he had already received the whole value of his property in cash from Fyodor Pavlovich and might even be in debt to him, that in terms of such and such deals that he himself had freely entered into on such and such dates, he had no right to demand anything more, and so on and so forth. The young man was stunned, suspected a lie or a trick, was almost beside himself, and, as it were, lost all reason. This very circumstance led to the catastrophe, an account of which forms the subject of my first introductory novel, or, better, the external side of it. But before I go on to this novel, I must introduce the other two sons of Fyodor Pavlovich, Mitya's brothers, and explain where they came from.

Chapter Three

Fyodor Pavlovich, having packed off the four-year-old Mitya, very soon married for a second time. This second marriage lasted about eight years. He took his second wife, Sofia Ivanovna, also a very young person, from another province, where he happened to have gone for a bit of contracting business in the company of some little Jew. Fyodor Pavlovich, though he led a wild, drunken,...

Table of Contents

Part One
Book I: The History of a Family
1. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov
2. He Gets Rid of His Eldest Son
3. The Second Marriage and the Second Family
4. The third Son, Alyosha
5. Elders
Book II: An Unfortunate Gathering
1. They Arrive at the Monastery
2. The Old Buffoon
3. Peasant Women Who Have Faith
4. A Lady of Little Faith
5. So Be It! So Be It!
6. Why Is Such a Man Alive?
7. A Young Man Bent on a Career
8. The Scandalous Scene
Book III: The Sensualists
1. In the Servants' Quarters
2. Lizaveta
3. The Confession of a Passionate Heart--in Verse
4. The Confession of a Passionate Heart--in Anecdote
5. The Confession of a Passionate Heart--"Heels Up"
6. Smerdyakov
7. The Controversy
8. Over the Brandy
9. The Sensualists
10. Both Together
11. Another Reputation Ruined
Part Two
Book IV: Lacerations
1. Father Ferapont
2. At His Father's
3. A Meeting with the Schoolboys
4. At the Hohlakovs'
5. A Laceration in the Drawing Room
6. A Laceration in the Cottage
7. And in the Open Air
Book V: Pro and Contra
1. The Engagement
2. Smerdyakov with a Guitar
3. The Brothers Make Friends
4. Rebellion
5. The Grand Inquisitor
6. For a While a Very Obscure One
7. "It's Always Worth While Speaking to a Clever Man"
Book VI: The Russian Monk
1. Father Zosima and His Visitors
2. Notes of the Life of the Deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zosima, Taken from His Own Words by Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov
3. Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zosima
Part Three
Book VII: Alyosha
1. The Breath of Corruption
2. A Critical Moment
3. An Onion
4. Cana of Galilee
Book VIII: Mitya
1. Kuzma Samsonov
2. Lyagavy
3. Gold Mines
4. In the Dark
5. A Sudden Resolution
6. "I Am Coming, Too!"
7. The First and Rightful Lover
8. Delirium
Book IX: The Preliminary Investigation
1. The Beginning of Perhotin's Official Career
2. The Alarm
3. The Sufferings of a Soul. The First Ordeal
4. The Second Ordeal
5. The Third Ordeal
6. The Prosecutor Catches Mitya
7. Mitya's Great Secret. Received with Hisses
8. The Evidence of the Witnesses. The Babe
9. They Carry Mitya Away
Part Four
Book X: The Boys
1. Kolya Krasotkin
2. Children
3. The Schoolboy
4. The Lost Dog
5. By Ilyusha's Bedside
6. Precocity
7. Ilyusha
Book XI: Ivan
1. At Grushenka's
2. The Injured Foot
3. A Little Demon
4. A Hymn and a Secret
5. Not You, Not You!
6. The First Interview with Smerdyakov
7. The Second Visit to Smerdyakov
8. The Third and Last Interview with Smerdyakov
9. The Devil. Ivan's Nightmare
10. "It Was He who Said That"
Book XII: A Judicial Error
1. The Fatal Day
2. Dangerous Witnesses
3. The Medical Experts and a Pound of Nuts
4. Fortune Smiles on Mitya
5. A Sudden Catastrophe
6. The Prosecutor's Speech. Sketches of Character
7. A Historical Survey
8. A Treatise on Smerdyakov
9. The Galloping Troika. The End of the Prosecutor's Speech
10. The Speech for the Defense. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways
11. There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery
12. And There Was No Murder Either
13. A Corrupter of Thought
14. The Peasants Stand Firm
Epilogue
1. Plans for Mitya's Escape
2. For a Moment the Lie Becomes Truth
3. Ilyusha's Funeral. The Speech at the Stone

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BRILLIANT !! BRILLIANT !!

This novel has everything you could possibly want in a book: love, family, murder, morals, life, and virtues. My favorite character is Alyosha, and I find myself falling in love with him the more pages I read in the book (could have something to do with the 1958 movie in which William Shatner plays Alyosha (Alexey)and the more I read the more I picture him as Alyosha. Dostoyevsky did an AMAZING job bringing his characters to life, and like most commentors' here, I agree that by the end of the book, you get to know the Karamazovs. It makes you wish that there was another book following this. MUST READ *****

9 out of 11 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted February 17, 2012

Misleading

I purchase this book because it states it is a Pervear translation. The book is translated by someone else. This is not what I expected. Beware!!!!

6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.

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Nicole-Syracuse-NY

Posted March 14, 2010

Intense Reading

I have to say it was a little hard getting into the book, but once you get about 175 pages in it reads very fast. I loved the book the names were difficult, but if you kept the names straight you will do fine. I would reccomend this book.

4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted December 22, 2007

6 stars if possible

Simply the best novel I have ever read. Period.

4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 3, 2007

A Masterpiece by a Master Writer

Having read almost all of Dostoyevsky's work, I can honestly say that this is by far his masterpiece. It takes every moral dilema ever faced by his previous characters and blends it into one gruesome, fantastic tale of a despicable father and his four incredibly different sons. There are so many different levels to read this book on that it's almost impossible to summarize it in under ten pages and still do it justice. I would highly recommend reading The Brothers Karamazov first before any of Dostoyevsky's other works by seeing the culmination of his ideas (or at least as far as he was able to develop them before dying), it becomes easier to see common themes in his other masterpieces like Crime and Punishment.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted May 5, 2010

The Best Book Ever Written.

The Headline above says it all.

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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mythoughtisme

Posted November 11, 2009

One of the greatest works of all time

Absolutely phenomenal book. Constance Garnett's translation is great. The book combines great psychology, philosophy, strong views on justice and morality, and deep chacterization into a well designed plot. 19th century Russia serves as a great backdrop to perhaps the greatest book of all time.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 6, 2008

masterpiece

Simply the best novel ever written.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted June 24, 2005

Outstanding

Brother's Karamazov definitely merits recognition as Dostoevsky's masterpiece. This book reads with all the suspense of a mystery, yet still offers deep insights into the overriding philosophical ideas of his day. As with all of Dostoevesky's works,the characterization is incredible. The characters are at turns detestable and lovable, but never flat. Alyosha remains my favorite character in all of literature.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 2, 2013

Not Dostoevsky's masterpiece

Dostoevsky usually does a wonderful job with his characterizations. It felt to me he just beats the reader over the head and pounds his characters into the ground in this novel. In Crime and Punishment he does a much better job showimg the reader the soul of his main character and provided a story that was much better put together than Bros Karamazov. My opinion is that Dostoevsky is still great but this is far from his best work. It was just WAY TOO LONG! It took me 4 full months to finally make it all the way through. If you like 19th century russian lit I highly suggest crime and punishment, the idiot, and the possesed. Also Tolstoy War and Peace and Anna Karenina are both wonderful novels.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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ARPG

Posted December 28, 2010

The Wisdom and the Insight

Much like the moral ideas that strike at the heart of East of Eden by the American author John Steinbeck, in Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky portrays the internal struggle of every person using his realistic and identifiable cast of characters. Each brother is brought to life by Dostoevsky to represent a separate view point to morality and life. Dmitri = passion, Aloysha = restraint, Smerdyakov = brutality, and Ivan = Logical. I identified the most with Ivan, realizing that it was his struggle that I encounter most: the struggle of faith vs. logic. I can see why Aloysha is a favorite character of most people because of his inherent kindness, his desire to believe in the good of other people, and his neverending loyalty to his brothers and father despite their numerous faults.

Those who seek answers to the difficult questions of morality, religion, justice, society, and family will find the aged and enlightened answers that Dostoevsky supplies worth the wealth of page turning this book requires.

A definite favorite of mine.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted May 17, 2009

AP World History Review: Trial of an Innocent Man

Stuffed with characters as diverse as Russia's landscape, from an honorable scoundrel to a saint on earth, The Brothers Karamasov is a fantastic blend of strange encounters and insane events. Set in a nameless town in a nameless province in Russia, The story revolves around the death, or murder, of a crafty buffoon named Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamasov. As His son, Dimitri, is accused of the murder and arrested, his, brother, Alexey, is the only one who believes that he did not do the crime. The book climaxes at the dramatic trial of Dimitri, and ends with a lot of loose ends that are not tied up.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in gleaning some insight into the culture of nineteenth-century Russia -- providing they have a good grasp of vocabulary. At times, the side plots and character personalities can be a bit confusing, but all in all, it was a very good read.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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The Pevear Volokhonsky Translation

This new translation of The Brothers Karamazov is a marked improvement over the older Constance Garnett translation: it is more enjoyable, the English is closer to Dostoevsky's Russian, and, thankfully, the humor of the original comes through.

The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's final novel and is considered to be among his best. The work has not suffered from the passing of time and is still interesting and enjoyable. I recommend this new translation to anyone reading the work for the first time, or for those who have decided to re-read and don't mind buying a new copy.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Do NOT buy this translation!

Constance Garnett is terrible. Do not get an book translated by her.
Get the David McDuff translation or the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation.

This is the best book I have ever read. Hands down.
The first 30 pages or so(first 'book') is somewhat dull, but after the story begins to pick up, it is the most fascinating book you will ever read!
The plot is good. It is a fascinating murder story. I couldn't quite classify it as a mystery, as the intent of the book isn't to figure out who killed 'him', but it is nonetheless intriguing. What is more important, though, is the philosophy. The book is largely an exploration of a variety of religious questions. Those, I will let you ponder for yourself.
The greatest virtue of the novel is the characterization. Dostoevsky an incredible ability to paint a character portrait.
5 stars... For the better translation!

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Anonymous

Posted June 2, 2007

*Speechless*

Such vividness. Well worth the effort.

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Anonymous

Posted December 19, 2006

A classic story

A classic story The greatest soul writer of all times and great contributor to human psychology successfully created a beautiful and amazing dynamism between the Karamazov brothers that has been the core of many stories after involving siblings. There is the unreliable father, the old Fyodor Karamazov whose life dominates his sons and whose death casts a huge shadow on their future.

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Anonymous

Posted September 19, 2005

This book has everything!

Each character is brilliantly identified so that you know them personally. Alexei, the monk, Karamazov Ivan, the most like his father, eloquent, and troubled by his own madness and Dmitri the self-proclaimed buffoon, the ladies man, the drunk, vying for the affections of Grushenka as is his father Fyodor, another self-proclaimed buffoon and drunk. Throughout, there is a battle between sanity and hysterics, realism and sensualism. The author sees troubled youth at the age of 13 needing a psychiatrist. He vividly describes his characters with 'brain fever'. He sees his own Russia in disarray, disorder, and sees the loss of personal values, where 'everything is permitted'. There is greed, jealousy, anger, gloom, despair in most of his characters. All his characters are 'dark' to say the least, with fleeting moments of joy. There are so many deep philosophical questions raised in this book. 'Does God exist, yes or no?' 'If not, perhaps there is a need to create the need for God.' There are surprises as well, showing limits of human capacity for suffering. Wow, what a great book!

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Anonymous

Posted August 6, 2005

A classic story

The greatest soul writer of all times and great contributor to human psychology successfully created a beautiful and amazing dynamism between the Karamazov brothers that has been the core of many stories after involving siblings. There is the unreliable father, the old Fyodor Karamazov whose life dominates his sons and whose death casts a huge shadow on their future.

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Anonymous

Posted August 1, 2005

A classic story

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, which is one of Dostoyevsky¿s all time best, perhaps the best, adds to make him perhaps the best writer of all times. The author came up with so many great ideas and characters that are so real to life even in their complex emotions and rationales that we relate to the characters as if we are in their heads. In the end, not only do we have a great story, we are also left with a beautifully written work of political, psychological, sociological, ethical and psychological thought that is very true not only to Russia, but to other lands and peoples as well.

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Anonymous

Posted February 21, 2005

Excellent

The best book I have ever read. The character development is some of the best in all of western literature.

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